STATE WATCH: State government: slimmer, still hefty

But has the state government lost as much weight as the governor boasts?

It seems not.

In his State of the State address, the governor asserted — or seemed to assert — that the state government has shed 20,000 employes so far on his watch.

Uh, not quite.

The real number of state government employes is down about 4,500 to 6,200, depending on who’s included in the count.

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Asked by The Trentonian to clarify the number, the Governor’s Office referred the inquiry to the state Treasury Department, which handles the state payroll.

“We think the governor was referring to the drop in total jobs in state and local government combined since he took office,” Treasury said.

Those numbers include municipal, school and county payrolls. The governor has no direct control and only marginal, indirect control over those payrolls through state-enacted property tax caps and state-aid appropriations.

“We have gotten our house in order by keeping our promise to reduce the size of government,” declared Christie in his State of the State, adding that more than 20,000 “government jobs” have been cut since he took office Jan. 19, 2010. “We promised to reduce the size of government, and we have delivered,” he said to the applause of assembled state legislators and other bigwigs.

He didn’t specifically say “state government jobs,” but seem to suggest that’s what he was talking about when he added that state employe roster is now smaller “than at any time since Gov. Whitman left office in January 2001.”

Evidently true enough — but still not by more than 20,000. Or even close.

Civil Service Commission numbers show the central state payroll — encompassing the executive, legislative and judicial branches — down about 4,600, to a total of just under 70,000.

The state Department of Labor and Workforce Development does a broader state employe count. It includes not only those on the central state payroll but the payrolls of state universities and various authorities. This count shows a total of 130,000 state employes, down about 6,200 from where it was in the last days of Gov. Jon Corzine’s administration.

Nailing down the number of employes on the governor’s staff is not less tricky a task. It is 213, 157 or 111, depending on various counts. The Christie administration, not surprisingly, prefers the last and least — even though the high count comes from the governor’s own “YourMoney” website. That high-count number of 213 includes interns and temps assigned to the office if only for a brief period during the year of the count. It yields a somewhat inflated total, the Treasury says.

The 157 number similarly includes any part-timers who happened to be on duty in the office during the nine-month period when that count was taken, Treasury adds. The 111 figure comes from the state’s audited annual financial statement and reflects actual paychecks issued when the count was taken, according to Treasury. That total “more accurately reflects the number of fulltime active employes in the Governor’s Office than the other tallies,” says Treasury. A similar count of Gov. Corzine’s staff near the end of that administration reported a total of 107 then aboard.

The highest percentage of central payroll employee cuts on Christie’s watch have included the Corrections, Human Services and Environmental Protection Departments. The Governor’s Office staff increase, though slight, is one of the few such in the executive branch.